I can see your point. If there was a discussion on a purely academic level about what direction Catalyst (which has quickly become easily one of the most important Perl projects) should be headed in, then it would have been interesting to see what was discussed, the different points of views, etc.

However, there are very very few discussions like this *ever*. Even amongst so-called professionals. Almost always, emotions get involved. I'd say this is even more likely in an open-source, Internet-based environment. And even more so where people have founded projects that have grown hugely.

The actions taken saved the community from the embarrasment of seeing the leaders of this project exposed at their most vulnerable. True, it's not totally transparent, which is usually something to strive for in open source projects. But would we have learnt much from it? Only that everyone's human, everyone gets upset.

Now that the bans have been lifted, we may get some less-heated discussions on what caused the difference of opinions, which we *may* learn something from. Once everyone's has a chance to cool off a little, they can see that their differences were purely philosophical, and realise that the split was for the best. This can then allow them to present the arguements in a more objective, un-emotional manner. I'd rather read that than something that was said in the heat of the moment.